The word migraine descends from hemicrania — half the head. One-sidedness has been considered the signature of the condition for as long as it has had a name, and the…
A set of questions to work through, and why ‘both’ is the most common and most useful answer.
Most self-diagnosed tension headaches are migraines. The activity test that separates them in one question.
The clinical distinctions, the convergence anatomy that lets a neck problem be felt in the head, and why the two coexist more than they compete.
A deep, aching, or pressure-like pain behind one or both eyes is one of the more unsettling headache patterns, because it feels like it's coming from somewhere so close to your vision itself. Most of the time, this pain has an identifiable and manageable cause. Occasionally, it's a signal that something needs urgent attention. Understanding…
A headache that consistently shows up on just one side of your head — always the left, always the right, never both — can feel different from an ordinary headache, and for good reason. One-sided (unilateral) head pain has a specific list of likely causes, and knowing which one fits your pattern can help you…
For roughly one in four migraine sufferers, an attack doesn't begin with pain. It begins with a warning — a shimmering zigzag creeping across your field of vision, a patch of numbness spreading up an arm, or a strange difficulty finding the right words. This is migraine aura, and for those who experience it, it…
Almost everyone who lives with migraine has had the thought cross their mind during a particularly bad attack: what if this isn't a migraine at all? It's an uncomfortable question, but it's the right one to ask — because while the vast majority of severe headaches are exactly what they seem, a small number are…
You've had headaches for years. Maybe you've even been told it's migraine. But the pain always seems to start in the same spot at the back of your skull, your neck feels stiff and tender before it hits, and pressing on certain spots in your neck seems to bring the exact same headache back. Is…
Tension-type headache and migraine are the two most common headache disorders in the world, and they're also two of the most frequently confused. Tension-type headache affects roughly 30% of people at some point in a given year, migraine closer to 15%, and the two share enough features—head pain, some sensitivity to light or sound, a…